


On the Cover of Dawn

by adeepeningdig, ellie-nors (flamewarrior)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Future Fic, Knitting, M/M, Medieval Medicine, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Timey-Wimey, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!, pirates!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 17:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14919818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeepeningdig/pseuds/adeepeningdig, https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamewarrior/pseuds/ellie-nors
Summary: “Listen,” Bucky says again, and pads to Steve, book still in hand. “I’d sell my soul for that/fawn/of a boy night walker/to sound of the ‘ud & flute playing/who saw the glass in my hand   said/“drink the wine from between my lips.” He kisses Steve then, insistent, tongue sweeping into his mouth, body to body. Steve buckles beneath it.Two stories. One poem.





	On the Cover of Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This weird little fic is my contribution to the Reverse Cap Big Bang. It's definitely unlike anything I've written before. A short appearance is made by a character who appears in my fic Little Animal Lives. You do not have to read the fic to understand this one. You should read it anyway. It's good, I promise.
> 
> Much thanks to [ellie-nors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamewarrior/pseuds/ellie-nors) for her amazing [art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14897796), her ideas and her great editing skills, and to yodas yo-yo, as usual, for her insightful comments. Historical notes at the end.

  
  


  
  


אהי כופר לעופר קם בליל  
לקול כנור ועוגבים מטיבים  
אשר ראה בידי כוס ואמר  
"שתה מבין שפתי דם ענבים!"  
וירח כמו יוד נכתבה על  
כסות שחר במימי הזהבים

-שמואל הנגיד

  
  


I’d sell my soul for that fawn  
of a boy      night walker  
to sound of the ‘ud & flute playing  
who saw the glass in my hand    said  
“drink the wine from between my lips”  
& the moon was a yod drawn on  
the cover of dawn—in gold ink

- **Shmuel Hanagid  
Translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Harris Lenowitz**

  
  


**Seville, Spain**

“Listen,” Bucky says. He’s standing in the corner, leafing through one of the small books the owner or past visitors had left on the shelves. They’ve closed the curtains against the Sevillian heat, so he is half in shadow, just his outline illuminated by the sliver of light coming in through a gap.

 “What’s that?” Steve asks.

 “It’s poetry,” Bucky says, turning the book over in his hands. “Medieval Hebrew poetry, apparently. Huh.”

“Hebrew?”

 “It’s translated.”

 “Ah.”

 “Listen,” Bucky says again, and pads to Steve, book still in hand. _“_ _I’d sell my soul for that/fawn/of a boy night walker/to sound of the ‘ud & flute playing/who saw the glass in my hand   said/“drink the wine from between my lips.” _He kisses Steve then, insistent, tongue sweeping into his mouth, body to body. Steve buckles beneath it.

 “Jesus,” Steve breathes, and feels Bucky smile against his skin.

 “Now, I’ve got you where I want you,” his husband mutters.

 Steve tips Bucky’s head up so he can see him. “You always have me.”

 “I know,” he says, and he lays his head on Steve’s shoulder.

 Their honeymoon has been as honeymoons should be. They don’t often leave their room while the sun’s still up and their nights are spent strolling hand in hand in the cool medieval stone streets, stopping to eat when they want, stopping to kiss when they want. Yet somehow it is this embrace that Steve knows will stay with him for the rest of his life -  Bucky in his arms, making a vow with his body

 “I love you,” he whispers.

 Bucky’s metal arm tightens around Steve’s waist. “Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

  


**Canaan, New York**

 Steve puts the paper bag down in front of Bucky with a flourish. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

 Bucky opens the bag carefully - he is always careful with his hands nowadays - and smiles.

 “You got him an orange?” Willow demands. “A fucking orange? I thought-”

 Steve shakes his head slightly. Willow closes her mouth.

 “Language,” Bucky mutters, but he’s blushing.

 “Oh, Jesus,” she says, “I don’t want to know. I really, really don’t.” She scoops up her new bracelet of Kimoyo beads- a gift from the both of them - and slouches out of the kitchen.

 Bucky is still holding the orange, looking at Steve.

 “I never did know where you got that orange,” Steve says. “I imagine you stole it.”

 The winter of 1937 was the worst winter either of them had experienced- weather so cold it cracked the small window in Steve’s bedroom, making the previously uncomfortable room positively unbearable.  Steve was still in mourning for his mother, and sick, just laid out with sickness. Bedridden for weeks, time seemed to cease to exist for him. He was only vaguely aware it was Christmas when Bucky showed up with that orange.

 Now Bucky shakes his head. “Didn’t steal it. I begged it off Mr. Vitari from the green grocer on New Utrecht. Told him my girl had been sick all winter, that maybe she was going to die. It was only a little lie. He charged me ten cents.”

 Steve hadn’t asked, back then, he’d just torn open the paper bag, sitting at a kitchen table just as now they were, and cradled that precious orange in his hands before tearing into it as Bucky watched, hungrily.

 Juice had slid down his hands, passed his wrists from where his fingers punched into the too soft fruit. He licked up his forearm, sweet and skin salty, and looked up to see that Bucky’s eyes were still on him. He put the peeled fruit down on the table.

 “Share it with me, Buck,” he said.

 Bucky shook himself, and then grinned. “It was a gift for you, you idiot.”

 “Share it with me.” And Steve opened the orange, separating a segment and sliding it across the table to Bucky.

 Bucky picked it up delicately with the tips of his stained fingers. “Let’s go somewhere,” he said. “Somewhere warm.”

 Steve smiled. He liked this game. “Cuba,” he said, and put a piece of orange in his mouth.

 “Constantinople,” Bucky smiled back and ate his own piece of orange.

 "Zanzibar.”

 “New Mexico.”

 “Tahiti”

 “Seville.”

 Now Steve closes his hands over Bucky’s, still cradled around the orange. “I thought we could go somewhere,” he said. “Somewhere warm.”

  


**Brussels, The Low Lands**

  


  


 The Soldier dreams in the King’s Castilian. Everyone in the servant’s quarters knows that. His nightmares echo off the stone walls, down into the lowest reaches of Coudenberg.  Nathalia doesn’t know what he’s screaming, and she’s sure she doesn’t want to know.

 During his waking hours she assumes he would speak the Court’s Flemish except she has never heard him speak. Most days she doesn’t seem him at all though she is at the Court every day when the Duke is there, in one form or another. Where the Duke is, Zola is; and where Zola is, his Soldier is. Nathalia thought she knew all the shadows - she is a creature of shadows, after all, but evidently the Soldier knows more than she. This bothers her.

 When she enters his chambers she comes in the drab wool of the servant girls. There’s no use in drawing attention to herself, or to him, quite yet. She doesn’t expect him to be there - Zola is in Utrecht - but there he is there, sitting on his pallet with his back to her, only in breeches.

 His back is bowed and listing towards the left under the weight of his metal arm. The Soldier has worn Zola’s arm for as long as he has been at court, or so she’s been told, but the scars radiating down from his shoulder down towards his spine still look raw and exceptionally painful. Nathalia does not wince.

 “Sir?” she says, hefting the laundry basket on her hips. He turns to glance at her, eyes widening and pulls his shirt over his head hastily. “I am sorry,” Nathalia stutters. “I did not think you would be here. I can come back later.”

 The Soldier shakes his head and stands up. He starts pulling the linens off his pallet.

 Nathalia drops the laundry basket. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, sir,” she says. “That’s my work.”

 He just shakes his head again, and thrusts a bundle of linen into her arms. She takes them from him. “Thank you,” she says, and he nods. She has never thought about the Soldier except in terms of what he can teach her, but his grey-blue eyes are exceptionally sad.

 Rumor has it that the Soldier is Zola’s most deadly weapon. The perfect instrument for the Council of Blood. He is spoken of in whispers, in places daylight never touches. Nathalia was not even sure he really existed until recently. And now that she has seen him with her own two eyes, she is doubly unsure.

 And yet, he catches her chin as she turns to leave, leaning forward before she can stiffen and pull away “Girl, be careful,” he whispers, not in Castilian, or even Court Flemish, but in her Duchess’s Italian.  “Zola has eyes in all the shadows you are looking to inhabit. Stay in the sunlight. You’ll be safer there.”

 

**Canaan, New York**

 For Christmas, Bucky bought Steve a piano, though Steve doesn’t play the piano. No, that is not right. For Christmas, Bucky bought Steve a Sonata: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to be exact. He bought it with lessons, with subterfuge and with countless hours in the high school music room thanks to the generosity, and amusement, of Willow’s high school principal.

 The first time they heard the Sonata was in Bucky’s grandmother’s sitting room - a dark, crowded room with heavy stuffed furniture they were not allowed to sit on, and a radio. They were young then. Bucky remembers standing against his Gran’s dark wood cabinet, the lip digging in to his upper back, so he could not have been that tall, and anyways, Steve told him that his Gran had passed when he was 11.  

 His Gran had made them stand through the whole thing, and Bucky was miserable. He remembers that. The misery and discomfort. But he can also remember Steve’s face as he listened, eyes closed. His face was as soft as soft could be, as if he were sleeping, and his whole body seemed to lean forward into the music. So Bucky had closed his eyes too, if only to see if he could hear what Steve was hearing.

Just like that, the music changed- the second movement slipped into the third, and Steve slipped his small hand into Bucky’s. What was an incongruent cheerful ditty, became something else entirely. The notes flew beneath the pianist’s hands, everything pushing forward, unbearably fast. He didn’t know what was happening: the music,- Steve’s hands in his. So he opened his eyes and saw his grandmother staring at him, mouth pursed. He removed his hand from Steve’s.

 When it was over, Bucky’s heart still pounding with it, his Gran gave them each a segment of orange and some sweet warm tea in the kitchen. “Well, gentlemen,” she said, “what did you think?”

 Bucky thinks it’s a pain in the fucking ass piece of music to play- and he’s got the sense that he wasn’t such a good piano player back when he had two flesh arms, let alone now that he has a metal one. But Bucky’s going to learn this damn fucking thing if it kills him, if only to see Steve’s face, soft as it is in his memory.

 So Christmas day he takes him up to the spare room.

 “A piano?” Steve asks.

 “Hush,” Bucky says, and sits down. He begins to play.

 

**Wakanda**

 Steve is staring at his arm, eyes wide and a little incredulous. This is not his first time visiting Wakanda, but it is his first time seeing the arm.  

 “What, you don’t like it?” Bucky asks.

 “No,” Steve says, swallowing. “No. I like it. It’s- it’s beautiful.”

 It is beautiful. It is a black so dark it is almost purple. Gold flashes when he moves. It is made in the colors of Wakanda, and Bucky wouldn’t have it any other way.

 “I just didn’t think-” Steve continues.

 “You didn’t think what?”

 I didn’t think you’d want a weapon again.”

 “Aw, Stevie,” Bucky says. “This ain’t a weapon. It’s a shield.”

 

**Brussels, The Low Lands**

“The new man  is a threat.” ( _that fawn of a boy)_ the Soldier tells Zola.  They are in the lowest reaches of the palace in the damp tunnels leading to Zola’s workshop.

 “Who?” Zola asks.

 “The new man- the Captain.The one who’s come to deal with the Sea Beggars.”  The Soldier’s hair had stood an end ( _i’d sell my soul)_ when he saw him from the shadows, his golden head bent before the Duke.

 Zola clicks his tongue. “He’s nothing to worry about. We continue as planned.”

 The Soldier nods. They continue as planned.

 In the workshop, Zola gives him his nightly draught as usual. As usual, he drinks it down in one swallow. ( _Drink the wine from my lips.)_

 Zola caresses his cheek. “Good night, Soldier,” he says.

 “Good night,” says the Soldier.

 The draught always makes him feel warm and a bit hazy. He knows he is missing things- missing time-he is used to it by now. But it would be dangerous now, if that  ( _fawn of a boy)_ Captain were to find him here like this. He dismisses the thought, though it makes his heart race. The man is not a threat. The man with the golden hair is not a threat.

 He ascends through the halls, one hand on the wall to make his way in the darkness, and kneels, as he always does to kiss the foot of the Madonna at the door to his chamber.

 “Why do you do that?” the laundry girl steps out into the pale moonlight coming through the casement.

 The Soldier smiles, seeing her. He still doesn’t know what she wants from him, but he doesn’t mind the company. She’s not dangerous to him, and she’s never tried to kiss him like Zola does.

 The Soldier opens his door and steps through after her. “I don’t know,” he says, and it’s the truth. He doesn’t know why he does it, it is something he has always done. Zola taught it to him, probably. Zola taught him everything. Though now, thinking about it, it seems strange that Zola would teach him this. Zola wears the trappings of his religion because it suits him and his plans, but at heart he is a heretic. Only a heretic could create the killer that the Soldier is. It must be a habit he had formed before Zola, though he cannot remember a time before Zola.

 The girl puts down her laundry basket and sighs, rolling her shoulders. “Do you mind if I rest here for a while?”

 He does not mind.

 

**Wakanda**

 “Is everything alright?”

 It’s Shuri, of course it’s Shuri. Who else would it be? He tosses his cigarette onto the dirt and grinds it out with his heel. Shuri doesn’t like it when he smokes.

 “Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

 It’s not nothing, Shuri knows that too. It is considered impolite to leave the circle when the drummers are drumming, but the balafon player had lifted his arm to strike a key and Bucky’s finger’s had twitched the progression of notes.

 There was a piano in the front hall of his mother’s house. There was no room for it anywhere else, and in truth, there wasn’t room for it in the hallway either. Bucky lived with a permanent bruise on his shin from running into the piano bench every time he left the house.

 There was a piano.

 “I think I played the piano,” he tells Shuri.

 “Really?” Shuri asks in delight. “The piano? Oh, that’s excellent. We can get you a piano. It’ll be great. It will be so good to build up your hand-eye coordination. Not that it’s bad now, but we can always improve things.”

 Steve would love it for Bucky to take up the piano again.

 Bucky shakes his head. “No. I don’t think I’m ready for the piano.”

 “Oh,” Shuri says. “Well, that’s alright.”

 Bucky looks out at the drummer’s circle- at Nakia’s beautiful scarf of soft green and blue yarn. He has noticed that Shuri likes to wear high-necked dresses and shirts.  

 “Can you teach me to knit?” he asks.

 

**Odessa, The Soviet Union**

 A glint of silver, then Sergei is dead. That is what Ilya tells the police. The man who killed him had had a silver arm. They laughed him out of the station. But Ilya knows what he saw. A shadow like a passing bird moved over him, so he looked up and just for a second he had seen the sunlight bounce off silver on the rooftop above the parade grounds.

 Sergei had died choking on his own saliva. Sergei had been a fool, though. He was a hustler, a thief and a black market thug. Ilya had warned him not to get involved with the Bratva. Sure, they paid good money, but look what happened in the end.

 There‘s no one to mourn for Sergei but Ilya. Nobody really liked him, not even Ilya.

 “You’ve gone off your head again, Ilya Petrovich,” Boris roars and pours him another drink. It tastes like pig swill, but it works quick, and that’s all that Ilya can hope for. “You think the NKVG cares enough about imbeciles like Sergei to have him killed? He had a heart attack. His heart was sick.”

 “No,” Ilya says. “I know what I saw. I know it.”

 “Ilyusha,” Boris musses his hair. “You always had an imagination. This is real life. Live in it.”

 Ilya turns away. There is a new man sitting in the corner where where Yasha usually sits.  

 “Where’s Yasha?” Ilya asks.

 The man shrugs, and Ilya catches a glimpse of a refinery uniform under his coat. The factory is always bringing in new people.

 Ilya buys the new man a drink, as is proper, and sits down across from him. Ilya ought to warn him about the assassins. He should be warned.

 “They killed Sergei, you know.”

 The man looks up. His eyes are a startling blue-grey. “Did they?” he asks.

 “Yes,” Ilya says. “I saw it. The assassin had a silver arm.”

 The man takes a drink, tipping his head all the way back. “Did he?” he says, and he smiles.

 

**Brussels, The Low Lands**

 He follows the Captain the next day as he adeptly maneuvers himself through the bands of court ladies that beset him each time he moves. For a man whose stature and countenance draw the eye, he is remarkably good at deflecting attention. The Captain slips out of the great hall at around mid-day. The Soldier follows.

He stops at the Chapel of all places, and turns around scanning the area, but his blue eyes don’t fall on the Soldier in the darkness. The Captain sighs, kneels down, and kisses the Madonna’s foot.

And.

The Soldier knows him.

 

**Fairfax, VA**

It takes some getting used to, dealing with the Asset. Pierce had warned them all during the briefing: he is not a man; no man has been alive as long as he has. He does not think; we do all the thinking for him. He is not even a trained dog. He is a gun. He is a missile. He is a bomb. You, agents, are the men.

Never mind that Agent Cofield is a woman, or that SHIELD was founded by a woman.

Never mind that for a man who is not a man, the Asset sure looks like a person. He sure reacts like a human being, shivering as he comes out of cryo, lips half blue. He retches and heaves forward out of Dave’s grasp.

 “Easy,” Dave says, before he can remember not to.

 The Asset looks at him, eyes a startling blue-grey. He says something in Russian.

 “What?”

 “Where am I?”

Dave is a scientist, not a philosopher. He is not equipped to deal with weapons that have a sense of self.

 “I-”

 He is saved by Senator Pierce striding into the room. “Asset!” he barks, and seeing him the Asset’s lips move in just a whisper, maybe a name, maybe something else. His eyes light for just a second. Then Pierce says, “We have a mission for you.”

 The moment of recognition is gone. The Asset stands naked at parade rest.  “Ready to comply,” he says.

  


**Siberia, The Soviet  Union**

 The subject finally passes out. He had stopped screaming a while ago, but had been making these awful whimpering noises like a mewling street cat. It goes quicker now. His healing is both a blessing and a curse. Zola can be sure he will not die, but he has to be quick about things so that he doesn’t heal around his work.

 He takes a step back surveying his work. He is a magnificent specimen. His Soldier has a muscled chest, wide shoulders, and is strong-legged. Even his prick, lying flaccid against his thigh is a thing of beauty. He was lucky to find him and doubly lucky to get him back. He can feel the Soldier’s pulse, steady and strong, beating through his femoral artery. The subject is no longer a man. He will be a god. He is Zola’s  life’s work and he will change the world.

 

**Brussels, The Low Lands**

 “You’re not who you say you are,” the Captain tells Nathalia.

 “Neither are you,” she replies.

 He smiles. “I am exactly as I say I am,” he bows, “my lady.”

 Nathalia frowns. He has caught her in a compromising position, such that it is, hastily leafing through Zola’s notes- the ones she stole. Amazingly, Zola hadn’t suspected her; he seemed amused, even, that a lowly laundry girl would become besotted with his deadly Soldier, especially when it was clear that the Soldier would not, or maybe could not reciprocate.

 “Ah, it’s better this way, my lovely girl,” he had said when she allowed him to find her crying outside his workshop. He stroked her cheek. “It is better this way, I promise. You do not want his attentions on you, striking and exotic a figure as he may cut. He is a dangerous man, and it would not do for you to get hurt. Take it from me, my dear.”

 And Nathalia had nodded and sniffled and followed him into his workshop to wash her face.

 Now, staring up at the golden-haired Captain, she thinks maybe she has miscalculated somehow.

 “Are you the Inquisition?”

 The Captain’s mouth ticks in half a bitter smile. “No, ” he says, then, after a pause, “Are you?”

 "The Inquisition was recalled from the Low Lands near a decade ago. But if you are afraid for your soul, sir, you need not worry. The Council knows what to do with heretics.” The Captain frowns. “You have been away for a long time, Captain.”

 “I suppose I have,” he replies and settles on his haunches, reaching out to leaf through the pages spread out in front of her. “I think,” he says, “that you and I have similar interests and similar goals. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”

 Nathalia stands. There is something warm and trusting in the Captain’s eyes. He is not made to be a spy. It is a wonder he has survived this long. She nods.

 “Excellent,” the Captain claps his hands. “Let’s get started. What do you know about Zola’s Soldier?”

 Nathalia considers this. Finally she says, “I think there are two Soldiers.”

 “Two men with metal arms? Everything I have heard has led me to believe there is only one.”

 She clicks her tongue, “What I mean is, I think he is two men in one.”

 The Captain opens his mouth but she forestalls him. “I have seen the Soldier gut a man in one movement. Wisht-” she swings her arm up- “like gutting a fish. His eyes were like it was nothing. They were nothing. I asked him about it, how he could do it in that way, and he didn’t remember it. He couldn’t remember doing it. It upset him.”

 “He could have been lying.”

 “No, I think Zola gives him something. I think he makes him forget what he does. I- he nurses baby birds back to life in his chambers. I do not think he would be doing what he does if he had a choice.”

 “A single man can be both extraordinarily kind and horrifically cruel,” the Captain says gently.

 “I know this,” Nathalia says. “But I do not think that this is the case. I do not think the Soldier should be our target. He is just the tool.”

 The Captain stands and begins to pace. “What then, Nathalia? Things cannot stand as they are. The Council must be brought to heel. The Duke must be brought to heel.”

 “To heel?” Nathalia laughs. “You think the King does not know what is happening in the Low Lands? Who was it who stymied the Duchess at every turn, making compromise with the heretics near impossible? Who was it who sent her crawling back to Parma in exile?” She shuts her mouth. She has said too much.

 “What then, Nathalia?” the Captain asks again.

 “We cut off the arm that wields the tool.”

 “Zola,” he says.

 “Zola.”

 

**Outside of Azzano**

 Gabe Jones knows shock when he sees it, and, Sgt. Barnes is in shock. Not medical shock, no, but he’s got the thousand yard stare that Gabe has come to know and dread so well.

 “Sarge?” he crouches down beside Barnes, who is rubbing at his shoulder, eyes a million miles deep into nothing. “Sarge?” he says again and touches his arm. Barnes doesn’t even flinch, which is a bad sign. “Hey, you want me to get Captain Rogers?”

 And what a thing that is, Captain America himself - taller, stronger, and more handsome than those idiotic movies made him look - had come to rescue them, all because of Barnes here. Not that he would admit it though- not that either of them would it admit it probably. Jones doesn’t know how he knows this. He just does.

 Barnes stirs at Roger’s name. “Steve,” he says.

 “Gabe.”

 Barnes shakes his head, “I know who you are.” His eyes - blessedly - focus on Gabe. “His name is Steve.” Then he snorts, “Captain Rogers, my ass. He’s Steve. He’s still Steve. There’s about 100 times more of him, but he’s still the biggest idiot on either side of the Atlantic.”

“If you say so, Sarge.” Gabe stands. Barnes is going to be ok.

 “I know so,” Barnes says. “I know so,” he mutters and folds his hands together in front him in a gesture so much like prayer.

 

**Brooklyn, NY**

 His boy comes in late, clothing torn and sporting a shiner on his left cheekbone.

 “Where you been, lad?” George says.

 Bucky starts in the dark hall and bangs his shin on the piano bench, letting out a muffled curse. He is only 14, too young for this.

 George has an idea why his only son left. Winnie and Nell had been at it again and that’s not a pleasant atmosphere for anyone, let alone Bucky who has always hated it when family fights. But the boy has to learn to stick around when things get rough. God knows, George doesn’t. He wants his son to do better than him, though

 Bucky swallows. “I was at Steve’s, Dad.”

 “Steve punched you in the face?” Steve Rogers couldn’t reach Bucky’s face to get at it. Maybe if he were standing on a chair.

 Bucky cringes and glances away. “He’s got a temper. It’s fine. We’ll patch it up in the morning.”

 “Don’t lie to me son.”

 He runs his hand through his thick dark hair - all from Winnie; God, Winnie’s hair - and sighs. “I went to Steve’s but he wasn’t there. He got into a fight with some guys near O’Malley’s. I had to bail him out.”

 George’s blood runs cold. Jack Sullivan runs out of O’Malley’s.

 “Sullivan’s men?”

 Bucky shakes his head. “Even Steve isn’t that stupid. They were rich folks from the city. Slumming it, I think.”

 George takes a breath and leans his head back against the back of his chair. God, he needs a drink.

 “Alright,” he says. “Come on in, son. Let’s get something cold on that cheek of yours.”

 He pulls himself out of the chair, and helps his boy out of his coat. “You know,” he says, laying a hand on Bucky’s unblemished cheek;. He can’t even grow a beard yet. “Steve is going to have to learn how to fight his battles on his own at some point.”

 Bucky steps out of George’s reach. “No,” he says, and his eyes shine something great and terrible - oh, his son, his son, what a hard life he will have with this love - “Steve’s never gonna fight without me by his side.”

 George reaches for Bucky and pulls him in. He buries his head in Bucky’s shoulder and does not weep.

 

**Brussels, The Low Lands**

 In Seville there were roses. It never seemed out of the ordinary to Steve when he was young, when he and Bucky ran barefoot, kicking up red dust in every direction under the relentless sun, careful to avoid snarling their clothing on the thorns of the climbing rose bushes. But now he knows it is far from ordinary for roses to grow in so arid a land.

 Here in the Low Lands it is raining and there are tulips, fields and fields of tulips in wet black earth lining the Zenne River, but somehow he is thinking of roses. Zola is dead.  His Soldier - the man with the metal arm - is not. There are roses on the Soldier’s sigil. It is a strangely delicate sigil for so feral a man. His eyes are a deep blue grey under his helm and they are empty, as Nathalia said they would be, and his metal arm is either a miracle of nature or a grotesque abomination.

They are without weapons now, fighting like animals in the mud. The Soldier is strong and fast. He kicks Steve’s legs out from under him and he goes down, pulling the Soldier down with him. The Soldier springs to his feet, unbelievably, a short dagger sliding into his hand. Under the weight of his cuirass, Steve is not nearly so fast, but he’s fast enough. He rolls away just quick enough to feel the sting of the dagger across his face. He has lost his helmet somehow. He rolls again, gets his feet under him, and faces his opponent.

 The Soldier is crouched, dagger in his flesh hand, fight ready. Steve rushes him. Again they are on the ground, sliding in the mud, impossible to get leverage. Steve grabs the first thing he can reach and gets his fingers under the edges of the Soldier’s helmet, and pulls.

 The helmet flies off.

 That face. His face.

 “Bucky?”

 The crack is like thunder. At first he thinks it is thunder, but the Soldier’s-Bucky’s eyes- go round with terror as he looks up and Steve’s eyes follow his. The powerful spray of splintered wood is the last thing he feels before the wooden abutment comes down on his head, and then there is nothing.

 He is going to die here in the Low Lands and it will be Bucky who will have killed him. Wet seeping into his breeches, wet in his lungs, he must reach Bucky who will have killed him, who will die trapped as he is as the river rises with the rain

 The earth is black under his clawing hands - black and cold. He crawls, he pulls himself forward, stomach to the ground, legs refusing to move. Bucky’s eyes are wide and terrified.

 “Bucky,” he says, and he reaches for him, catching the edge of his dented armor. Bucky strikes out, but Steve does not feel it. “Bucky,” he says again. “You promised,” he is beyond the horror of weeping. “I promised. We promised each other. As my salvation is in the Law of Moses, I swore it. You did too. Please, Bucky.” Oh, let the innocence of their youth, let it save them now. Let that oath sworn years ago, to never be without the other speak for them now and serve as salvation.

 Bucky shakes his head, a small frenetic movement. “As my salvation,” he whispers, and that’s all Steve needs. He plunges down into the river bank, throwing all his weight against the wooden beam of the abutment. It shifts and Bucky screams as Steve goes down, down into the waters.

 Bucky reaches for him.

  


**Brooklyn, NY**

 She comes in later than usual after a surgery gone long. She does not remove her coat, or her gloves, but straightaway steps smartly to the back of the tenement apartment to see her son. Bucky is there, the two boys twined together on Steve’s small bed - Steve’s arm is thrown around his friend’s shoulders as if protecting him, an unrealized dream. In waking life Bucky is always throwing himself in front Steve. Oh, the troubles they get into, these boys of hers.

Bucky stirs and turns and opens his grey-blue eyes; they are serious and un-laughing and trained on her face, and she is suddenly struck with a foreboding so strong that she takes a step backwards. She swallows and takes off her gloves, makes herself step lightly forward and kneels down to brush Bucky’s hair out his face. He is not her son, but she kisses his forehead anyway. He is sleep warm, and flushed.

 “You’re a good boy, Bucky Barnes,” she says. He closes his eyes. “You’ll be a good man, James Buchanan Barnes

 

**Brussels, The Low Lands**

 The Soldier, no, Bucky - the Captain had called him Bucky - smiles when he see the laundry girl, though she is not a laundry girl today. Now she is dressed like a burgher’s daughter, in plain, high quality wool, her huik shading her face.  The Captain takes her hand and it turns something in Bucky’s stomach.

 “We’ll be traveling as husband and wife. You’ll act as our manservant if that’s alright with you.” Bucky looks from the girl to Steve.

 The girl releases the Captain’s hand and takes his. “Bucky,” she says, “I killed Zola. I can’t stay here, and I don’t want to go back to Parma.”

 “Yes,” he says. It’s not up to him, anyway, he’s just following the Captain, his Steve, come back for him.

 “Bucky,” Steve puts his arm around his shoulder. All this touching. He stiffens but doesn’t pull away. This is Steve. His Steve who he dragged from the river without knowing why, only that he knew that he had to. He had sworn by the Law of Moses, which was a heresy, but then again, so was he. Steve had said that he had sworn by the Law of Moses too, but he is no sinner like Bucky. It is difficult to think about. Either way, it puts them in danger, and Zola is dead, so they need to leave this place.

 “Where are we going?”

 Steve had come all the way from the New World to save him. “Anywhere, anywhere,” he’d muttered against Bucky’s skin, as they lay twined together, fighting off the cold of the river. “I’d come back from Hell to get you.”

 But he hadn’t come from Hell, he came from the New World where he had grown and been made a Captain. He was just a small thing in Bucky’s memory, a slip of pale skin and golden hair, fists clenched in righteous anger. Now he is big, taller than Bucky, but still pale skinned and golden haired, fist clenched in righteous anger.

 “Mexico?”

 “No,” Steve shakes his head. “The Inquisition is still strong there, and it wouldn’t be safe for Nathalia, either.”

 “I can take care of myself,” she mutters.

 “I know,” he nods at her. “You have beyond proven yourself, my lady. We owe you our lives and our thanks.”

 “Is he always like this?” the girl - Nathalia - asks Bucky.

 “I don’t remember,” he answers truthfully, “but I think so.”

 “Listen,” Steve says, and he takes Bucky’s hand, much as he did Nathalia’s before. “I’m not sure how much you remember, but you and I, we’re different. We’re New Christians-we’re- we stick together, we have our secrets.” He reaches into his cloak and takes out a small scroll, unrolling it with deft fingers. The script on the scroll is stark black and beautiful. Someone wrote this text with care and artistry. Bucky can’t read it. He shakes his head.

 “I can’t read it either,” Steve says, “but I learned a bit about it in the New World. This- this is Hebrew. It’s a holy text to us. We put it in the Madonna’s foot. That’s why we kiss it.”

 Bucky doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember, but he knows that he bends to kiss the Madonna’s foot and he knows that he swore by his salvation in the Law of Moses, and he knows that wherever Steve goes, he will go. “So where are we going?” he asks again.

 “I have some friends among the Sea Beggars. They’ll get us to my ship undetected.”

 “You have friends among the Sea Beggars?” Steve and his ship, the Shield, were sent to the Low Lands to do away with the Beggars, or so Bucky had been told.

 Steve smiles, and it is a feral thing. Bucky doesn’t know himself, but he knows that grin.

 “Once,” Steve says, low and furious, eyebrows furrowed, “once, not so long ago, in our grandparents time, we had standing, we had communities, we had property. Your grandmother could worship as she’d like. Don’t you want to make them pay?”

 “Pirates!” Nathalia laughs, clapping her hands. “Of course it would be pirates. It’s been you who’s been harrying the King’s ships off of Jamaica.”

 Steve nods his head. “Me and my crew.”

 Bucky looks from Nathalia to Steve- his fawn of a boy turned buck.

 "Well,” Nathalia says, smoothing her skirts down as she settles in the small boat. “Let us go.”

 Steve sits himself down beside her, then Bucky sits across from them. He lifts the oars.  

 Now they are hidden in the shadow of the embankment, but he looks up and ahead and sees the stars in the darkness, the light of a lone campfire on the flat stretch of the Low Lands, and the moon in gold ink, on the cover of dawn.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The historical setting for the part of this story that is set in the 16th century is real. In 1555, Philip II of Spain took over the throne from his father Charles V and became the ruler of the vast and expanding Spanish Empire (though he would have thought of it as the Holy Roman Empire). He at first left rule of the Netherlands to his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, but then gave it over into the hands of the Duke of Alba, also known as the Iron Duke. A devout Catholic, Philip was concerned about the burgeoning Reformation movement, which was especially strong in the Netherlands as well as rooting out Conversos, or New Christians - Jews who had chosen to convert to Christianity rather than die or be expelled with nothing but the clothes on their backs in the years before and during the Expulsion from Spain in 1492.
> 
> After the Expulsion, Converso communities existed all over the world. Some remained in Spain (Seville had a strong Converso community), many fled to Portugal, and some followed Columbus to the New World, trying to get as far from the Inquisition as possible. Some Conversos even became pirates, as Steve does in this story, making their living harrying the Spanish ships off the coasts of the Caribbean.
> 
> Hidden as good Catholics, Conversos held their own beliefs and rituals in secret. Though Hebrew as well as the rudimentary understanding of Jewish law was pretty much forgotten, Coversos would swear by their salvation in the Law of Moses, or lean down to kiss the Madonna's foot where a small mezuzah (a scroll with the Shema - the declaration of faith in one God - inscribed on it that is hung on the doorposts of Jewish homes) was hidden. So while Steve and Bucky as Conversos would not actually know the works of the great Jewish Andalusian leader and poet, Shmuel Hanagid (993-1056), all other aspects of their lives as Conversos could be true.
> 
> For more on Conversos during this period of time see Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of Crypt-Jews by David Gitlitz and The Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean by Edward Kritzler.


End file.
